The Case of Marvin Grimm Jr.

📻 Episode #551
🎙️ Hosted by Lauren Bright Pacheco
📅 Nov 20, 2025

⬥ STILL IMPRISONED

About This Episode

Case status as carried in this site's original 2026 profiles. Independent record verification is rolling out episode by episode — statuses are being re-checked against court and registry sources and date-stamped as verified.

The Case

On November 22, 1975, a mother reported her three-year-old son missing after seeing him roaming in the vicinity of a wooded area behind their apartment complex in Richmond, VA. His body was found in the river nine miles from his home four days later. The murder garnered tremendous media attention and public outrage, yet the police failed to find a lead or suspect. 20-year-old Marvin Grimm Jr. lived across the hall from the family and, based on two arguments Grimm had with the boy’s father almost a month after the murder, police set their sights on him. After a nine-hour work day, police picked up Grimm and subjected him to another nine-plus hours of interrogation, causing Grimm to break down and confess to killing the boy. Grimm pleaded guilty, and the court sentenced him to life in prison.

https://www.arnoldporter.com/en

https://innocenceproject.org/

https://www.law.virginia.edu/clinics/innocence-project-uva-school-law

https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/236-jason-flom-with-thomas-haynesworth/

https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/401-guest-host-ashley-fantz-with-marvin-anderson/

In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts

Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.

00:04:56
“Speaker 1: picked up a second job doing maintenance work at their Speaker 1: apartm and complex, and they lived across the hall from Speaker 1: the victim and his family, with whom Marvin had two Speaker 1: trivial run ins, like accidentally running over a few small Speaker 1: toys with the lawnmower. The family also had a dog.”

00:17:57
“Speaker 1: needed to be heard by a judge, so hearing was Speaker 1: held in March nineteen seventy six, where the medical examiner, Speaker 1: Doctor Fierro, testified about the existence of sperm on the Speaker 1: throat swabs as well as the towel, followed by Mary Speaker 1: Jane Burton's findings that the hair from the pea coat”

00:32:00
“Speaker 3: Virginia Attorney General's Office did a fantastic job at doing Speaker 3: their own investigation and in fact uncovered exculpatory evidence that Speaker 3: we had no idea existed. So in Marvin's statement, he Speaker 3: says that he tore his shoe on the river bank Speaker 3: throwing the body into the river, And so they had”

Listen to the Episode

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🔊 How You Can Help

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← #550 Oscar Eagle #552 Robert Bintz →

Also on the podcast: #401 Marvin Anderson · #476 Marvin Haynes · #564 Dr. Marvin Cotton Jr.